


This Is The Story Of River Song

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [12]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 04:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every life is a story, some with more plot twists than others.  The time has come for River to tell Clint and Coulson hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just a few author’s notes before we begin.
> 
> First and always foremost, thank-yous and kudos to **like-a-raven** for betaing and cheerleading. I’m extraordinarily happy that this ‘verse has taken over your brain, too.
> 
> A quick note on the structure of the Academy and the Silence in this verse. After several attempts to figure out what canon was doing (and mostly getting a headache) I decided to do what I’ve done with everything else: tweak it to suit my nefarious purposes.
> 
> The River Song in this ‘verse is essentially a composite of the canonical River Song and the canonical Natasha Romanoff. I’ve attempted to create a back story for her here that I hope does justice to both.
> 
> I’m breaking my usual rule and posting all of the chapters of this fic at once. Just given the metric ton of exposition, I thought it wasn’t fair to make readers deal with time lags between chapters. Enjoy!

_“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” River said after the TARDIS had vanished._

_“Will you tell us?” Coulson asked._

_River nodded._

_“Yes,” she said. “It’s time you knew.”_

_Thursday, April 9, 2009_

River had one request. 

“Not here,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but can we do it off the base?”

Coulson, Clint, and River had migrated a few feet away from the spot where the TARDIS had. . .taken off? Phased out? Dematerialized? Coulson didn’t even have the vocabulary to describe what they’d just been through and he didn’t like it.

He also didn’t like the way River was looking at him with poorly concealed dread like she was waiting for him to break out a water board and electrodes. God, was that really what she expected?

At the same time, Coulson got it. SHIELD was in the business of learning everything it could about potential hostile threats. The Doctor, for all that he had helped them today, qualified. He was intelligent, technologically advanced, morally ambiguous, and above all alien. SHIELD headquarters had just entertained an uninvited visitor from another world. That was going to have ramifications and River had a past history (at least on her end) with the man.

Then there was the matter of River herself.

_If you were simply baseline human, the readings would have shown that immediately. They didn’t. The sonic didn’t know quite what to make of you, which means you’re something else. Something a bit other than human. So, what are you, Agent Song?_

No wonder she looked spooked at the prospect of filling in the blanks.

That was what made up Coulson’s mind. That and the look Clint was giving him over the top of River’s head, the look that said, _So, are you driving or am I?_

Coulson glanced over at Fury and Downing. They were standing several yards away, talking quietly, heads together. Fury was bent almost double to accommodate Downing’s much smaller stature.

“Give me a minute,” Coulson said to Clint and River before moving off to speak with his boss and his former boss.

It wasn’t like they could just take off without a word to anyone after what had gone down. There were going to be questions to answer and reports to file and, God, the debriefing from this mess was going to be a _bitch._

So Coulson was surprised, when he asked for permission to take Clint and River off base “to regroup,” that he got an affirmative answer.

Fury just exchanged a look with Downing and nodded.

“Permission granted,” he said. “Report back to base at 0800 hours on Saturday. It’ll take me at least that long to get the scientists to stop screaming.“ Fury smiled wryly. “Meeting the Doctor face-to-face takes a little bit of mental realignment. I should know.”

“And I’ve heard tell,” Downing said. “Please stay in the area, Phillip, and be available if we try to reach you. I’ll want to hear your reports of the events myself when you get back. In the meantime,” she added to Fury, “since I’m in the city, I should look in on Joseph and Michael and Christopher tomorrow. It’s been a while since I paid a visit.”

Fury nodded. “I’ll have a car at your disposal, ma’am.”

And just like that, River, Clint, and Coulson were free to go.

“Meet me at the motor pool in fifteen minutes,” Coulson told them. “We have a day and a half. Pack accordingly. We’re going to ground until we get this all straightened out.”

*****

By unspoken agreement, they went to Coulson’s apartment in Brooklyn.

River had only been there once before, as Coulson spent more time on base or out on the field than he did at his permanent address. The place still managed to have a comfortably lived-in feeling, though. Half of its contents had come from Coulson’s childhood home, inherited after his mother had died.

That homey feeling was largely lost on River now. 

River sat on Coulson’s sofa, back straight, clasped hands resting on her knees. Clint sat beside her, a little too close, making her feel twitchy and hemmed in. He was unnaturally silent. Clint had gotten quieter and quieter on the drive out to Brooklyn and River was sure she knew why. He was trying hard to hide it, but he was upset.

Well, and who could blame him? He’d just found out that the woman he loved, his partner whom he trusted to watch his back, had been lying to him for the last three years. She was a freak of nature who had kept him shut out of some fairly significant parts of her life. Now that the Doctor was gone and the base was safe, he’d no doubt had time to fully absorb that.

Coulson was sitting on her other side in the armchair. Of the three of them, Coulson had always had the best poker face. River would be hard pressed to guess what was going through his head, but he seemed inclined to wait patiently for her to begin.

River took a deep breath. “I’m not really sure how to start this,” she said.

There were many ways she could tell this story, and not a one of them wasn’t going to be confusing at the onset.

Coulson leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, mirroring her posture.

“Is River Song your real name?” he asked.

It was the first question he’d ever asked her, during her first official SHIELD interview. River smiled faintly.

“Real? Well, that’s subjective. If you mean is it the name I was born with, then no. My name was Melody Pond. Which I take it you’ve already guessed.”

Coulson had asked her just that morning if the name _Melody Pond_ meant anything to her. When Coulson asked a question like that, it was a good bet that he already had half of the answer.

“What do you mean he already guessed that?” Clint asked, speaking for the first time. 

Unlike Coulson, Clint had always had the worst poker face out of the three of them (unless he was actually playing poker). River could see anger beginning to develop under the stony façade.

Coulson reached into the laptop bag beside his chair and pulled out a thick file. He removed four neatly clipped sheaves of paper and laid them out in a row on the coffee table.

“Maybe you can tell me,” he said, “exactly how many Melody Ponds there have been.”

River’s eyes widened a bit. “My. You’ve been busy.”

They were dossiers, each one with a photograph clipped to the front. River wondered how in the world Coulson had come by some of them, especially the black and white photo of two girls with their bicycles. River picked up that dossier to take a closer look. She could remember posing for that picture, standing in the road with her best friend, Kathy Shaw, in front of the Shaws’ house back in Oban. 

Melody I, the Scottish girl who, as far as anyone remembered, had drowned in the ocean before her life had really begun. 

The dossiers varied in size. Melody II, the Oxford scholar, had the largest one. Melody III, the girl from Manchester, had the smallest. That was to be expected. Melody IV, the sociopathic killer, had the most official looking documentation.

“I thought I was looking at a program,” Coulson said. “Girls all raised with the same cover story, all of them called Melody Pond. Now. . .well, you’re going to have to tell me what the hell I’m looking at. How many Melody Ponds are there?”

“One.” River dropped Melody I’s file back on the table. This explanation had been a long time coming, and now that the moment was finally here, River felt oddly calm. “Just one. Me. They’re all me.” 

Clint and Coulson had gone with her on the confession of time travel. Granted, they had been under the gun back there on the base, but they hadn’t balked as much as she had expected. Now it was time to really put their credulity to the test. 

“You heard Rory talking about regeneration,” River said. “You heard the Doctor telling Fury that he’s on his eleventh face? Well, I’m on my fifth.”

*****

Round One took a while.

The groundwork alone was a lot to get through: the Church of the 52nd Century, the Cult of the Silence that had grown up within it, and its activist arm, the Academy of the Question. The Doctor and his habit of wading hip-deep into the tides of history. Time Travel 101. The effects of the Time Vortex on developing human genetic material.

There really was nothing like having to fill your two best friends in on the details of your own conception, no matter how vague. 

River very quickly gave up her seat on the sofa in favor of pacing back and forth across Coulson’s living room as she talked. Somehow, keeping her body in constant motion helped keep the story going. Clint remained on the sofa, slouched down a bit, arms crossed in a deceptively casual, unconcerned pose. He listened so impassively she might have suspected him of switching off his hearing aids. 

He hadn’t, of course. When River’s voice started giving out (sometime around 1971) he got up, went to the kitchen, and came back with a glass of water that he handed to her without a word. When Coulson’s face started to look pinched and he shifted, trying to find a comfortable position for his burned and bandaged arm, Clint retreated to the kitchen again, returning this time with water and Tylenol.

Coulson, by contrast, grew more and more animated as she went on. River supposed she couldn’t blame him. After years of digging and asking questions he was finally getting real answers.

*****

“Let me make sure I understand the sequence of events,” Coulson said when River paused to give her voice a rest. “Amy got. . .gets. . .is going to get. . .” He shook his head. “Okay, for the sake of my sanity, I’m going to keep this all in the past tense.”

River nodded.

“Amy got pregnant with you on board the TARDIS. The Academy found out and they thought that exposure to the Time Vortex might mean you’d be. . .”

“Mutated,” River supplied. 

“Different,” Coulson countered. “So, they kidnapped Amy and took her to their base in the 52nd Century, which is where you were born.”

“On Asteroid Outpost 3127.9,” River said. “More commonly known as _Demons Run_.”

Coulson mentally ticked that off of his list. He had spent more than a few nights going over maps looking for a place called Demons Run. He’d even gone as far as picking likely geographic regions and translating old, archaic names of valleys and rivers. 

He looked at the dossiers on his coffee table, resting his fingers on the first one, the one for Melody I.

“So,” he continued, “you were born in the 52nd Century and when you were a month old, the Academy turned you over to a pair of loyal members, the MacDonalds. You said they were Anglican Marines? Do I have that right?”

“You do,” River said. 

“Last month you told me you were raised by a priest,” Coulson said. He and River had been undercover in a church when she’d let that little tidbit slip. “That was Robert?”

“Elizabeth. Robert never went through Ordination Training.” 

“Right,” Coulson said. “So, the Academy gave you to the MacDonalds and sent you all back in time. They landed in Oban, Scotland in 1932, with the cover of an ordinary couple looking for a quiet place to settle down with their orphaned niece. They raised you there and started training you to fight the Doctor. You lived there until 1944 when you were involved in a bad accident, and that’s how they found out that you could regenerate.”

Coulson saw River nod as she paced by him again. She had barely stopped moving since she’d started telling her story. Clint, on the other hand, had barely stirred. He sat silently on the sofa watching River with guarded eyes.

Eventually, they’d have to address that, but there were other things to deal with first.

“1932,” Coulson said. “So, when we first brought you in to SHIELD and you made that crack about being seventy-three years old. . .”

“I wasn’t screwing with you. I actually was seventy-three years old. I’ll be seventy-seven in June.” River sank down into the old rocking chair. “That’s the dubious joy of regeneration. I don’t know what it’s like for real Time Lords, but for me it set my physical age back every time it happened.” She smiled wryly. “I have officially been through puberty, wholly or in part, five times. It’s probably no wonder I wound up killing people.” 

The joke fell rather flat.

Clearing his throat in the awkward silence that followed, Coulson moved on to the second dossier. This one had a picture of a dignified, dark-haired young woman wearing Oxford robes clipped to the front. Melody II. 

“After your regeneration in 1944, you all relocated to Oxford, England and lived there for quite a while. You went to college there. Once you graduated, you went to work as a government secretary, at least on the official record. In reality, you served as a freelance operative for British Intelligence.”

“It was the heyday of the Cold War,” River said. “The Academy decided that the 1930s and ‘40s were the best place to learn the value of sacrifice and duty, and they were right. But nothing beat the ‘50s and ‘60s for learning espionage.”

“I’ll bet,” Coulson said. 

During his research on Melody II, Coulson had noted several things in her official record that struck him as having the hallmarks of a cover story. It had been fairly simplistic, but in an era before the internet and computerized databases, it didn’t have to be anything else.

“So, in 1966 you got. . .you regenerated again,” Coulson went on, his hand moving to the thin dossier for Melody III.

*****

The adolescent girl in this picture had blonde hair and a cheeky grin. She stood between Robert and Elizabeth MacDonald, who by now could have passed for her grandparents. River felt an ache like an old, healed-over injury at the sight of it. It had barely registered with her back then how much they had aged.

“Now, tell me if I get off course here. In 1974, the Academy decided to pull you off Earth and ‘out of your time stream’ for a while.” Coulson was clearly still getting comfortable with the vocabulary of time travel. “They sent you to the 42nd Century to fight as a soldier in the Darian War.”

“Dianian,” River corrected. “Or the War of Dianian Succession. But yes, that’s essentially correct. I already knew how to fight and how to be a spy, but someone in the upper echelons of the Academy decided that it was time I learned proper soldiering. Opportunities for that for women were a bit thin on the ground on Earth in the 1970s, so they sent me elsewhere.”

She still remembered how excited she had been to go.

“Seems like a hell of a risk to have taken with you,” Coulson said.

“I think some of the researchers at the Academy thought it was possible the Doctor might show up there,” River said. “Besides, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Academy is a lot like the World Security Council. It’s a big bureaucracy and half the time it has its head firmly stuck up its own ass.”

Coulson snorted in amusement. “So, you were in the 42nd Century for ten years?” he continued. River nodded. “Then the Academy sent you back home to Earth, to 1984. By that point, Robert and Elizabeth MacDonald had been dead for four years.”

“Yes,” River said shortly.

She’d long had her suspicions that another reason for her decade-long deployment had been that the Academy had wanted to sever the bond between her and her foster parents, deeming it no longer necessary. By sending her away they had ensured that River hadn’t been there when the people who had raised her, the two constants in her life, had died. That was high on the list of things River didn’t think she’d ever forgive the Academy for.

Coulson seemed to understand that he’d hit a nerve and looked apologetic when he went on. 

“And when you reached 1984 you were dying,” he said.

“Radiation poisoning,” River said. “Not a fun way to go. It took a couple of days, but I ultimately regenerated again.”

“Which brings us here.” Coulson laid his hand on the dossier for Melody IV. Mel Pond’s picture was a capture from grainy security footage.

“Yes. Not my most endearing incarnation,” River said.

As Melody III, she’d spent two days knowing that she was going to die. She’d been away at war for years and seen and gone through some horrible things. She’d made friends there that she’d had to leave behind with no explanation and no hope of ever seeing them again. Then she’d come back to Earth only to learn that the two people who meant “home” to her were dead. She’d spent her last days as Melody III wishing that she could just stop feeling anything.

She’d gotten her wish. As Mel Pond, she’d been a lot of things, but “mentally and emotionally stable” had not been one of them.

“It looks like you did a lot of work as a mercenary in those years,” Coulson said. “And I’m betting that you were good enough that there was a lot that never made it into our files. Until Queens, 2000. That’s where you finally met the Doctor.”

“Yes.” River pushed her toes against the rug, rocking her chair a bit. Even sitting, it was hard to stay still. “I spent my whole life training to fight and kill the Doctor. I was supposed to be the only one who could, you see. Because I was like him, at least a little bit. It took the bastard almost seventy years to show, but he finally did, and Amy and Rory with him.”

And that was where her life had been turned inside out.

“They didn’t know me at first,” River continued. “I was still Mel, then. But, well, long story short, there was gunplay. I regenerated into this.” She gestured vaguely at herself. “Thirteen years old, physically. I always knew how old my body was. It’s a Time Lord thing, I suppose. 

“Once that happened, they _knew_ me. That’s how I always knew they’d turn up again.” River had begun to rock the chair with a bit more vigor. “They called me _River Song_. They told me things that. . .” 

She shook her head, pushing herself up out of the chair and going back to pacing.

“Well, at any rate, we just saw the other end of that loop play out.” Amy and Rory had just met her for the first time and now knew her as River Song. “When I met them. . .well, it wasn’t what I was expecting, but I still had my mission, and I carried it out. I killed the Doctor.” She laughed almost silently. “And then I turned right around and saved him. I actually raised the man from the dead. I’m still not sure it if was the right thing to do or not.”

“And that’s why you can’t regenerate anymore,” Coulson said.

River nodded tiredly. 

“Regenerative energy stays active for a little while after a regeneration occurs. I took all that I had and poured it into the Doctor. I had no idea if it would work. I thought that if it did it might kill me. It didn’t, obviously, but it burned me out. My memory gets pretty fuzzy after that. The next thing I remember was being in hospital. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory were there. They had taken me over to London—to make it harder for the Academy to trace me, I suspect. They stayed with me for a while. Then they left.”

River had spent months after that berating herself for feeling hurt and abandoned by that act. 

“I was on my own. As soon as I could manage it, I snuck out and went to ground.”

“Right,” Coulson said. “And this is the part that I don’t quite get. You checked yourself into a boarding school?”

River’s lips twitched. Put like that, it did sound a little odd, even if it was just a drop in the ten-gallon oddness bucket.

“I needed a safe place to get my head together, work out my next move. Kirkwood was ideal, and a place like that is a hell of a lot easier to manipulate than the foster care system. I’d been squirreling money away for decades, I had contacts outside of the Academy, and I had the know-how, so I set up a fake persona for myself.”

Coulson already knew about that. River had seen his file on _Sarah Campbell_ and her eighteen-month stint at Kirkwood. He had tracked that down in her first few months at SHIELD.

“I had to sit through _Survey of British History_ again, and living in a dorm full of adolescent girls was exhausting, but it was a decent short-term fix. I even thought about making it permanent. I thought about just living my life out as _Sarah Campbell_. I could have conveniently killed off my fictional parents once I turned eighteen, gone to university, become a teacher or a veterinarian or something. I thought about it a lot.”

“Why didn’t you?” Clint asked abruptly.

It was the first question he’d asked since she’d started her story. Hell, it was the first time he’d spoken at all in hours. It caught River off guard.

“Because. . .” River drifted to a halt, fumbling for an explanation. “Because I’d spent my whole life being one thing. I knew how to be a spy and a soldier. I knew espionage and strategy. I knew how to fight, how to kill people. What I didn’t know how to do was live like a normal person. I finally figured out that it just wasn’t in my skills set.” River shrugged a bit. “So, in the end, I fell back on what I knew.”

Clint was watching her out of half-hooded eyes. “You mean you didn’t think you deserved to live like a normal person.”

He always had seen way too much, right from the beginning.

“Maybe.” 

River wanted to deny it outright, but she’d told Clint enough lies for one lifetime. She sighed, sinking down into the rocking chair again.

“You have to understand,” she said, “I believed in the Academy. I believed in their mission. I believed that the Doctor had to be killed for the greater good, and that I was the only one who could do it. I believed in it so much that I let the Academy turn me into weapon for it. The only problem was that it was based on a lie.”

“So that’s why you stopped believing in anything,” Coulson said. 

“I decided it was the only way to never be used like that again,” River replied. “No loyalty, no ideology, no code. I went to work as a mercenary, and I was damned good at it. I had no trouble getting work even if I did look like a kid. I took any job, no matter what it was or who it was for. I did some terrible things because I _knew_ they were terrible, because if belief was just a lot of nonsense then none of it mattered.”

River’s mouth quirked wryly as she looked up at Clint and Coulson. 

“Then you two showed up,” she said. “And you made me start believing again whether I wanted to or not.”

Even before River had let herself grudgingly embrace SHIELD and its mission, she’d started believing in these two men, and they’d been her touchstone ever since.

River snuck a look at Clint, hoping that he understood. Even though she’d lied to him all this time, maybe past the point that he could forgive, she wanted him to understand what that chance encounter in that alley in Sofia had meant for her.

But Clint was as closed off as she’d been in those early days.

“Let’s go back to the Doctor for a moment,” Coulson said. The man was in full information-gathering mode. River knew that he could go on like this for days. “You said that the Doctor has a lot of enemies. What exactly is the Academy’s issue with him? What did he do to them that they’d go to lengths like this to kill him?”

“Directly? Nothing that I know of.” River leaned back in the rocking chair. “Their primary reason for targeting the Doctor is based on a prophecy.”

Coulson just stared at her for a moment before rubbing his hands across his face.

“Jesus,” he said. “I’m going to need coffee before hearing about anything that features the word _prophecy_.”

“Probably not a bad call,” River replied.

*****

Clint and River trailed after Coulson when he went to put the coffee on to brew.

Being in the kitchen seemed to alert them all to the fact that they were starving. A poke through the available food options turned up several unappetizing-looking cans of soup, half a bag of pretzels, a pack of cheese that went straight into the garbage can, ten bottles of beer, and a few frosted-over packs of meat in the freezer. 

It was going on midnight, but fortunately, the Greek place on the corner delivered at all hours. Clint, Coulson, and River settled in at the kitchen table and started digging into gyros and fries.

“The Academy is essentially the military branch of the Silence,” River explained as they ate. “They like to call themselves _The Sentinels of History_ which, of course, the Doctor mucks about in like a kid in a sandbox. They don’t like the fact that he interferes.” 

“I’d say that’s a bit rich considering what they did with you,” Coulson said, blowing on his coffee. 

“Desperate times, I suppose. Even cults of the future tend to be pretty hypocritical. They’re convinced that one day the Doctor, if he goes unchecked, will destroy the entire universe. Some have speculated that he already _has_ destroyed it, possibly a few times over, but managed to reverse the damage.”

They’d covered this under Time Travel 101. Time was way more flexible than most science fiction gave it credit for, and was actually damn good at absorbing change and paradox without making the universe implode.

“The prophecy also states that the Doctor will destroy them.”

“The Silence?” Coulson asked.

River nodded. “ _On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked, a Question that must never, ever be answered_. They also teach that Silence will fall when that question is asked.”

“The _eleventh_ being the eleventh Doctor? He said he was on his eleventh face.” Coulson set aside his coffee cup and reached for his beer. “What’s Trenzalore?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” River said.

Clint looked up from picking at his food. “What’s the Question? The one that’s never supposed to get asked?”

“No one knows.”

Clint looked highly skeptical. “If it’s a question that’s supposed to destroy them, how can they not know what it is?”

“Probably because, like all prophecies, it’s complete bullshit,” River said, sitting back with her own bottle of beer. “Just a lot of vague theological rhetoric made up in order to have an excuse to rub out someone they don’t like. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to, anyway.”

“It sounds like they did have something to base it on, though,” Coulson said. “You called the Doctor the last of the Time Lords. Did he really do what you said? He killed off his whole race?”

River nodded. “As far as I know, he’s never tried to deny it. He’s reportedly told people that he had no choice. That he did it to end a war that would have decimated, well, everything. He killed his people to save everyone else.”

“Thus casting him as the noble hero,” Coulson said. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

River stared down at the table for a moment before answering. “Yes,” she said. “I do. And I don’t think he necessarily survived by choice. Mind you, I’m only speculating there.”

She had been fed information and stories about the Doctor from babyhood, but it had only been since she’d actually met him that River had started thinking and wondering about the Time Lord, pondering the _whys_ and _wherefores_.

“If you’re asking me if the Doctor is inherently good or bad, though, I’m not sure what to tell you,” she said. “I spent most of my life believing that he was an evil maniac. Other kids grew up on fairy tales; I grew up on stories about the Doctor. Every scary thing in my closet, every monster under my bed, it was always him. Always. The Academy didn’t even have to embellish the truth all that much. 

“Of course, some of what they told me were outright lies. They claimed that the Doctor had enslaved Amy and Rory, kept them with him against their will. They told me that when I was born, the Doctor forced them to abandon me to certain death; naturally, the Academy swept in and rescued me. That story fell apart in Queens.”

“Whatever happened to the Academy?” Coulson asked. “Are they still around? I mean, I get that they’re still around somewhere out there in the future, but what about in our time?”

“Long gone, as far as I know,” River said. “I’m sure they assume that Melody Pond died in Queens, which, in a way, she did. There’d be no reason for them to stick around. Once I disappeared, they likely packed up and went home. Wrote the whole experiment off as a failure.” 

A sixty-eight-year-long waste of time.

River had kept her head down and her eyes and ears open that first year at Kirkwood, alert for any sign that the Academy might have gotten wise to her ruse. By the time she’d left the school, she’d been confident that they were gone, out of her life for good.

“Well,” Coulson said, “at least that’s one thing we won’t have to worry about.”

*****

_Friday, April 10, 2009_

The night wore on, but all three of them were too wired to even think about getting some sleep.

Coulson had resumed his seat in the armchair, knocking back another dose of Tylenol. River was stretched out on the sofa looking at the dossier Coulson had put together on Melody I. Clint was in the floor doing pushups.

“I can’t believe you went and found Kathy Shaw,” River said, letting the dossier detailing her first twelve years flip shut. “I also can’t believe she wound up married to Bobby Ferguson. They couldn’t stand each other when we were kids.”

In another life, she and Kathy might still be friends, two little old ladies getting together for tea every day and comparing pictures of their grandchildren.

River pulled the old black-and-white photo out from under the paperclip so that she could look at it more closely. She found herself smiling. Dear old Kathy. She’d been a good friend, even though Melody Pond had led her into scrapes and reluctant daring-do more often than she’d liked.

“Did you _steal_ this?” River asked, holding up the picture and looking around the dossier at Coulson.

“Yes, I did.” Coulson didn’t look even remotely guilty. “Mrs. Ferguson and I had a nice long talk while we were in Oban.”

There was a sound suspiciously like a snort from Clint as he finished a set, bracing his arms to hold himself up off the floor for a moment before folding his legs under him so he was sitting. River could guess why. Coulson’s little research project on Melody Pond had been news to Clint and he wasn’t even slightly happy about it.

It was probably a toss-up as to which one of them Clint was currently more pissed off at. 

“That old castle you took me up to see,” Clint said. “That was your house, wasn’t it? That was where you lived.”

River met his eyes, trying not to let her heart sink at the accusation in his voice. She’d known that this would be the price of telling the truth.

“The rent was cheap,” she said lightly, “and it was fairly private, which was handy when people from the Academy popped back to look in on us. Madame Kovarian came twice a year or so, along with Dr. Weatherby. They liked to check on my progress.”

One of her earliest memories had been of Madame Kovarian visiting. She had been not much more than two, clinging to Aunt Elizabeth’s hand, while the woman in black bent down to look at her, patting her cheek with an icy hand. _Oh, little one. You’re going to save us all_.

River scooted up so that she was sitting more than lying on the sofa. 

“I wanted you to see it,” she said more seriously, “even if I couldn’t tell you what it meant. That kind of went for all of Oban, really. When Fury told me to take the two of you to a safe place. . .I don’t know. It was just the first thing I thought of.” 

Oban had only been her home for a handful of years, but it had been her first home. Perhaps that was why it had retained such idealized status in her mind. Her life had been relatively easy and untroubled in that little town by the sea.

“I read through all the newspaper articles about your disappearance,” Coulson said, nodding at the dossier in her hand. “It sounds like the MacDonalds were pretty highly regarded.”

“They were.” River smiled. “They had some odd notions about things and were a bit prone to letting their niece run wild, but overall, yeah, they were well liked. I meant what I said before,” River added to Clint. “They really were good people.”

That was one thing at least, River acknowledged, that the Academy had done right. They had wanted a weapon to use against the Doctor. They could have raised her with clinical austerity at best, with cruelty at worst. But the Academy had also wanted loyalty, and they had been smart enough to know that it was not to be won through fear and pain.

True loyalty was a product of love.

At the end of the day, River knew that Robert and Elizabeth had lied to her and manipulated her just as badly as the rest of the Academy had. She also knew that they had loved her. And she had loved them, with all her heart.

She was aware that Clint had long held the opinion that her foster parents must have been abusive to some degree given that she’d wound up doing covert ops and assassinations as a “teenager.” The new information he now had didn’t seem to have altered his opinion.

“Yeah,” he said, moving into position to start a set of sit-ups. “Aside from the kidnapping, the brainwashing, throwing you to wolves, and raising you with no choices they sound _great_.”

River didn’t try to argue. She just got up and went to the kitchen for more coffee.

This was turning out to be a very long night.

*****

“What’s it like? Regeneration,” Coulson asked as the clock ticked on into the wee small hours.

They had migrated back to the kitchen to pick at the leftovers from dinner. Coulson and River sat at the table. Clint seemed to have caught River’s compulsion to pace.

“Pretty unpleasant, honestly,” River said. “When you regenerate, your body basically pulls itself apart on a cellular level and reforms into a new one. You can’t stop it or control it. All you can do is ride it out.”

After seventy-odd years and everything she had done and been through, River didn’t think anything had ever terrified her the way her first regeneration had. She still remembered the looks of stunned awe and tearful relief on the faces of Robert and Elizabeth when she’d come out the other side of it.

“You never know what you’re going to get as a result, either,” she added. “Physically, you have to get used to a new body, but it’s also a huge mental jolt.”

“How so?” Coulson asked.

River considered for a moment.

“Imagine yourself at twenty,” she said. “And then imagine yourself at thirty. You’re still _you_ , you’re the same person, but not entirely. Your tastes and opinions may have changed, your outlook has shifted, different aspects of your personality have come to the forefront. But those changes happen gradually over ten years, so you don’t think much of it.

“With regeneration, it happens like _that_.” River snapped her fingers. “In an instant. It’s fairly disorienting, really. And it’s not a matter of a slate being wiped clean. You don’t forget what came before. All of those women in those dossiers? It’s not that they _were_ me, they _are_ me. Even dear old Mel, the psychopath.”

“What happened when you were twelve?” Clint asked. Most of his contributions to this ongoing conversation had been like this, short and out of the blue. When River looked at him now, it seemed like all the lines in his face had deepened. “Regeneration is something that happens when you’re dying, right? So how did you wind up dying when you were twelve?”

River had glossed over that before by just saying that she’d been in an accident. She probably should have known that Clint would press for more.

“I fell,” River said. “From a very great height.” She looked directly at Clint. “It was nothing nefarious. It really was just a stupid accident.”

“And Robert and Elizabeth staged the boat trip and faked losing you at sea because they couldn’t produce a body,” Coulson said. 

“Exactly. And it wasn’t like they could explain to the neighbors that a twelve-year-old redhead had spontaneously turned into an eight-year-old brunette,” River replied. “They kept me hidden while the search was ongoing. Of course, they sent a message to the Academy as soon as they could to tell them what had happened. The Academy sent Dr. Weatherby straight away. He kept an eye on me while Robert and Elizabeth were out with the volunteers.” 

Dr. Weatherby had spent most of the time poking and prodding at her, taking samples and running tests. His clinical enthusiasm had done nothing at all to comfort the confused and frightened child left in his care. River had almost forgotten how much she’d hated that man.

“Anyway, once the memorial service was over, we rendezvoused in Oxford. Started setting up a new life there.”

“What about the other times?” Clint cut in again. “Were those just ‘stupid accidents,’ too?”

“I think you know that they weren’t,” River said evenly.

That effectively killed conversation for about five minutes while all three of them developed an intense, single-minded focus on other things. Coulson eventually broke the silence.

“Did it have any other effects?” he asked. “Exposure to the Time Vortex altered your DNA, gave you qualities in common with the Doctor’s race. Was regeneration the only thing? Obviously, you don’t have two hearts. We would have noticed that in Sofia.”

River smiled faintly. Yes, that would have been a bit hard to explain.

“Aside from regeneration, the physical alterations are subtle,” she said. “My physiology is human, or at least not noticeably inhuman. I’ve always been a little stronger and faster than maybe I ought to be, but I don’t know if that can be chalked up to Time Lord DNA or just several decades of consistent training. The abnormalities would show up on a genetic scan, but fortunately SHIELD doesn’t run those as a matter of course. Most of the effects manifest as mental abilities.”

“Mental abilities like always knowing what time it is and where you are?” Coulson asked.

That particular little talent had always intrigued Clint and Coulson. River had never offered them an explanation for it other than, _It’s just something I do._

On one memorable mission, early on in River’s SHIELD career, she’d gone off book and let herself get caught by some of the arms dealers whose headquarters they’d been trying to track down. They’d roughed her up, black-bagged her, thrown her in the back of a truck and driven for three hours, straight to said headquarters. As soon as she’d been tossed into a cell, River had pulled her hidden comm and called Coulson and Clint with the exact coordinates. 

The prejudice with which SHIELD had cleaned house had only been rivaled by the force with which Coulson had hit the roof when they’d found her.

“That’s one of the big ones,” River said. “I always have a good idea of where I’m situated in Time and Space. Language acquisition is the other. It’s just something that’s always come easily. I should probably tell you that I lied on my official records about how many I speak.”

Coulson raised his eyebrows. The list of languages that River was officially fluent in was already half again as long as most field agents.

“Lied? How many do you speak?”

“Fifty-seven human languages, nine alien ones, and a handful of computer languages. I do have to sit down and learn them, but I can achieve fluency in about a month.”

Oh, _now_ he looked at her like she had two heads.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“An innate understanding of temporal physics, but that’s not as handy in everyday life.”

“What’s the drawing?” Clint asked. When River hesitated, momentarily confused, he continued impatiently. “That drawing that you gave me back when you were in training. The Doctor seemed pretty interested in it.”

Indeed he had. The Doctor’s eyes had gone to it almost immediately when they’d been in Clint’s quarters. 

“It’s not a drawing. It’s writing,” River said. “Gallifreyan. It’s the language of the Time Lords. That’s why he was interested in it.”

River had written out the old proverb one evening, a few months after she’d been taken in by SHIELD. It had been nothing but a means of distracting herself from the tedium of her training, residual unease from being in a strange new environment, and (if she were to be fully honest) loneliness. Clint had seen her “doodle” and liked it so, without stopping to examine her motives too closely, River had given it to him instead of throwing it away.

At the time, she’d never expected that it would still be hanging up in his quarters over three years later. She’d barely remembered it was there when she’d seen the Doctor’s eyes narrow at the sight of it.

Clint didn’t ask the next most logical question, what the writing said. He just shook his head and walked back out into the living room. River watched him go, but didn’t try to follow. Clint was not what she would call an insecure person, but he did have his occasional issues and one of the biggest was being seen as stupid. River wondered if he thought she’d been playing him for a fool all this time.

She wondered if maybe she didn’t deserve that accusation.

“So,” she said to Coulson, “did you want the full list?”


	2. Chapter 2

By morning Clint was exhausted, feeling frayed and edgy, and still not even remotely inclined to sleep. Neither were River and Coulson, who had done nothing but talk for the last caffeine-fuelled twelve hours. They looked like they were set to keep going except that Coulson had run out of coffee.

“I’m going to run down to the store,” Coulson said. “I’ll grab something for breakfast, too. I won’t be long.”

The silence in the apartment once Coulson left felt strange on Clint’s ears after hours upon hours on listening to River pour out her story. With Coulson gone, River sagged back in the armchair momentarily. Her eyes traveled over to Clint with a look in them that he couldn’t put a name to. But rather than say anything, she pushed herself up out of the chair and went into the kitchen.

After a minute he followed. He found River at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes from the night before. Clint leaned against the doorframe and watched.

Clint Barton had never made a habit of over-analyzing his feelings. He wasn’t one of those guys who tried to act like nothing ever bothered him at all. Emotions were an asset, overall, so long as they were dealt with appropriately. But he had no idea how to deal with what was running through him right now. 

All Clint knew was that he didn’t think he’d ever been angrier at anyone in his life than he was at River and Coulson right now.

His reasons for being pissed at Coulson were pretty straightforward. Coulson had stumbled onto something pertaining to River’s past, and instead of saying something he’d gone and pulled a Sherlock Holmes behind their backs for four fucking months. For Christ’s sake, the man had actual dossiers on these women—on River.

Melody. Whatever. The point was that you didn’t _do_ that, not to your team _or_ your friends.

The situation with River was more complicated. (Wasn’t it always?) Clint had reached a point with River where he had thought he knew her inside and out, barring some short, dark chapters of her childhood that he still wasn’t allowed to read. It turned out that he’d had it backward all this time. Most of the book had been censored out, and he’d only been allowed to read the last few pages. 

Sure, everyone had the right to keep some personal shit strictly personal, but how many times did he have to ask River to trust him? On the days when she’d get that old, haunted look in her eyes or the nights when he’d woken her up from another nightmare she “couldn’t remember” he’d asked her to tell him what was wrong. Hell, on at least one occasion, he’d practically begged her. She’d never told him.

Now he knew what was behind those rough days and nights, but apparently River had thought it was better to try to shoulder this crap all by herself than talk to him about it.

So, yeah, he was pissed off at River for lying to him. He was pissed off at River and Coulson both for treating him like he was a slow kid who couldn’t handle hearing the truth. He was pissed off _for_ River, for what the Academy had done to her. They had taken a child, told her that the fate of the entire fucking universe depended on her, and trained her to be their own personal weapon of highly specialized destruction. He was pissed off at Robert and Elizabeth MacDonald for having done such a number on her head that River could sit there talking about what good people they had been.

Mostly he was just pissed.

“You should have told me,” he said.

*****

River hesitated for a moment before stacking a dish in the drainer. So, apparently they were doing this now. Well, she’d known it was coming. River didn’t turn around to look at him. When she answered, her tone was brisk and light.

“Yes, I suppose I ought to have. Sorry about that.”

That seemed to catch Clint off-guard. “Excuse me?”

River turned away from the sink, fixing an overly bright smile on her face.

“Well, I imagine it’s all a great shock. I’m a worse liar and killer than you ever thought. And I’m technically old enough to be your grandmother on top of that.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you think is bothering me?”

It wasn’t quite the response she’d been angling for, though the furious undertone was encouraging. River had stolen (quite literally) a peek at her Psych file once. According to the SHIELD shrinks she was “occasionally prone to strong fatalistic tendencies.” Chalk it up to sending her formative years being told that she had a great destiny. River had already calculated how this situation was going to play out. Once Clint had time to completely process what she was, he’d want to end things with her. Of course, being Clint, he’d feel guilty and drag his feet.

She might as well make it easy for him to cut her loose. Given the mood he’d been in for the last twelve hours, goading him into a fight wouldn’t be hard.

“It’s funny to think about, isn’t it? If I were normal, I’d look something like Director Downing. Only I’m not normal. Hell, when you get right down to it, I’m not even one-hundred-percent human.”

She could see Clint was starting to lose his grip on his temper.

“What the fuck are you playing at, River?”

*****

After everything that had happened over the last day and a half, Coulson didn’t think there was anything left that could surprise him.

He was wrong. Coming back from the store to find Clint and River having a shouting match in his kitchen was high on the list of things he was not anticipating. 

Coulson could hear them out in the hallway and he fumbled his keys twice trying to get into his apartment. Clint and River were so deep into it that they didn’t even notice his arrival.

“I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t have believed me! If I had tried to tell you about any of this you would have marched me straight to the nearest mental ward!” River’s eyes had gone very dark and her cheeks were bright red. Coulson had never seen her lose her cool to this extent.

“You didn’t even give me a chance!” Clint looked like he was close to punching something. “For fuck’s sake, River, you’ve known me more than three years! Did you really think I wouldn’t even _listen_ to you?”

“HEY!” Coulson shouted from the doorway.

They both turned to look at him. It was amazing how the tension in the room seemed to actually thicken in proportion to the drop in volume.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Coulson asked.

River turned her back on both of them, picking a dishtowel up off of the floor and slapping it onto a countertop before finding something very interesting to stare at out of the window. Coulson turned his attention to Clint, whose jaw was clenched so tight that Coulson could see a tic developing.

“We’re just getting a few things worked out, Phil,” Clint said evenly.

“Yeah. So I heard,” Coulson said, setting the grocery bag on the stove.

Okay, maybe he should have seen this coming, but he hadn’t, and it was unnerving. It reminded Coulson of the rare times he’d seen his parents fight. His instinct now was the same: to sit Clint and River down and _make_ them be okay.

Of course, Coulson knew better than to think that would work. Frankly, anything he did to referee would probably only make things worse.

Coulson looked from the tense line of River’s back to Clint’s balled-up fists and shook his head. 

“Look,” he said, “I’m going to clear out for a while. You guys. . .do what you need to do. Just do me a favor and don’t get me evicted, all right?”

*****

The sound of the front door clicking quietly closed behind Coulson seemed to echo through the apartment.

River finally turned away from the window and, without a word, fished the carton of milk and out of the grocery bag and put it away in the refrigerator. She stood still with her hand on the handle for several seconds before turning and heading for the doorway. 

“Where are you going?” Clint asked.

“Out for a walk.”

“Oh, like hell you are.”

Clint stepped in front of her, blocking her way out of the room, and he saw anger ignite in her eyes again. If he had any common sense left, that sight should have made him back off. He wouldn’t put it past her to try to kick his ass right now. Well, that was fine. If they had to literally fight their way through this, then that’s what they’d do.

But he’d be damned if he’d just let her walk out.

“Get out of my way.” River’s voice was pitched low.

Clint remained parked in the doorway, glaring down at her. “Are you planning to come back?” he asked. “Or are you going to walk out that door, disappear, and I’ll never see you again?”

River’s mouth set itself in a tight line and Clint knew that at least a part of her had been thinking just that.

“Maybe it would be the best thing for all three of us if I did.”

“Yeah? Well, guess what, sweetheart. You don’t get to make decisions for all three of us.”

“Just move!” she said.

“No.”

River made a sound like she was actually fighting down a scream of anger and threw her hands up in the air. “God, Clint, just tell me what the hell you want. I can’t undo any of what’s happened. I can’t change what I am. I can’t fix this. So what the hell do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop trying to push me away and scare me off,” he said taking a step toward her. “I want you to trust me enough to actually talk to me about this. River, you should have told me.”

As suddenly as it had flared up, River’s anger died away and she looked more lost than anything.

“Fine,” she said. “You want the truth? I was scared to tell you. Is that what you want to hear? Because I knew that this would happen, that you wouldn’t be able to accept it. I knew that as soon as I told you, I’d lose you and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. Happy?”

Weird as it was, the admission did make him happy. Or at least slightly more optimistic than he’d been a moment ago.

Clint took another step toward her. Slowly and cautiously closing the distance, just like he had that night in Bulgaria when he’d first met her.

“Okay, first off, you haven’t lost me,” he said. That optimistic feeling grew at the look in her eyes. “Second, you don’t get to decide what I can and can’t handle. Neither does Phil for that matter.”

Clint still had a bone to pick with Coulson on the subject of digging around behind his friends’ backs. 

“You’re seventy-six years old. Fine. You know what? I don’t care,” he continued. “You’re not exactly human. I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass. You were born on an asteroid, traveled in time, and fought wars in outer space. I can roll with that.”

There were only a few inches left between them now. “And you can try to push me away all you want,” he said, “but I’m not leaving unless you come straight out and tell me that you want me gone. And even then, I’m going to fight you on it. Okay? River?”

She didn’t say anything, but the way she wound her arms tight around him, her fingers digging into the material of his shirt said enough. Clint felt the anger and dread that taken hold of his insides loosen. Her face was hidden against his chest, but Clint could feel her taking long, slow breaths, the way he knew she did when she was holding onto her composure with both hands. He wrapped his arms around her.

“I can’t promise I won’t get weirded out occasionally,” he continued. “There are probably going to be days when I look up and think things like, _gee, I wonder if River was one of those crazy screaming Beatles groupies._ ” Clint smiled when he heard River snort. “But you know what? I like weird.” He tightened his hold on River, dropping his head so that it rested against hers. “Please don’t leave,” he added quietly.

After a moment, he felt River nod. “Deal.”

*****

The few times that River had ever allowed herself imagine a best case scenario in response to telling Clint the truth, it had gone something like this. Granted, her imagination had skipped over the fighting, the yelling, and the emotional roller coaster. She knew they still weren’t completely out of the woods, but she’d take it. River surreptitiously rubbed her eyes dry against Clint’s shirt.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I know.”

River took a deep breath and pulled back a bit so that she could look at him. “So, what do we do now?” she asked.

“We wait for Phil to come home and apologize for running him out of his own apartment.”

River smiled tiredly. “Given the look he had on his face, that might take a while.” She sobered. “Everything the Doctor said to me during interrogation, all that stuff about not being entirely human, is going to be on record. Fury’s probably viewed it by now. He’s not exactly going to have a hard time figuring out what it means, assuming the Doctor didn’t tell him outright.”

Her biggest fear about being exposed had been the possibility of being written off by Clint and Coulson. Ending up as a SHIELD lab rat, though, was a close second.

Clint seemed to know which way her thoughts were leaning.

“If the Doctor said anything like that to Fury, and Fury had planned to lock you up, he never would have let us off the base. If he’s figured it out since? If anything smells off when we go in tomorrow, we walk out of SHIELD. Together,” he said. “We’ll kidnap Phil and take him with us. He likes us. We can Stockholm Syndrome him in under a month.”

“I’m telling him you said that.”

Clint smiled briefly, but his eyes were still largely serious as he asked, “So, is there anything else important I ought to know about? Are you heir to the throne of something? A twin? A Hogwarts graduate?”

“No. No, nothing like that,” River said with a wry smile. She rested her hands flat on his chest, thinking for a moment. “Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I was married once.”

She risked a glance up at Clint.

“It was when I was away, during the Dianian War. His name was David. He was another soldier. We were married for about eighteen months. We got divorced.” River shrugged slightly. “It turned out that I really sucked at being married.”

Clint did look a little stunned, but he just nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks for telling me.” 

She could see him starting to wrap his brain around it, the fact that almost eighty years of life was going to add up to a lot of personal baggage.

“Kids?” he ventured. “Do you. . .I mean, have you ever had kids?”

“No.” River shook her head. “The Academy doctors concluded pretty early on that I couldn’t. Fucked up DNA. It’s not like I’m compatible with anyone.”

The Academy hadn’t explored the issue any further than that. They’d needed her to be able fight, not procreate. 

“I’m sorry,” Clint said.

“It’s all right.”

There had been a time when that knowledge had been a blow, but it was long past. River had given up dwelling on it sometime in the 1950’s. It had never really occurred to her to wonder if Clint had ever envisioned them one day having a pack of little proto-spies. She hadn’t thought too far into the future for her and Clint, convinced on some level that they wouldn’t have one once he knew the truth.

Now, it looked like they did have a future, or at least a shot at one. Apparently, Clint wasn’t the only one who was going to have to adjust his thinking.

That thought made her smile. When Clint raised a quizzical eyebrow at her, she just shook her head and said, “Have you slept lately, Barton? Because, no offense, but you look like crap.”

He actually grinned. “Look in a mirror lately?”

“Nope. And I’m not going to.” River grew a bit more serious. “Do you think we’re going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. But we’ve played way worse odds.”

*****

Since his apartment was serving as ground zero for Clint and River to fight out their trust issues, Coulson walked to the café two blocks east of his building. He frequented the place enough to know that it had everything he needed to hole up for a few hours: a strong wifi signal, good coffee, and relative peace and quiet.

He’d grabbed his laptop on the way out the door. Coulson set himself up at a back table and, in his password-protected research folder, set up a new file: “The Doctor.” He wasn’t sure what he might find, but if the Doctor was everything that River claimed, surely there would be something out there on him.

The internet delivered and then some.

Coulson lost count of the number of blogs and forums he found that either featured or were outright dedicated to the Doctor. Not all of them seemed to be manned by people on the lunatic fringe, either. In fact, there was some serious academic debate going on in a few of the shadowy corners.

One website had an entire library dedicated to historic sources pertaining to the Doctor (or men that people believed to be him). It cited the personal writings of the likes of Queen Victoria, Nostradamus, Winston Churchill, Admiral Byrd, Nikola Tesla. It referenced historical events all over the world. There were even obscure legends and ghost stories in which the Doctor seemed to appear.

There was a picture gallery, photos and paintings and sketches of men purported to be the Doctor. Some of them almost definitely were of the man Coulson had met yesterday. Others looked nothing like him. There was apparently a strong argument that _Doctor_ was a title that was passed from man to man, perhaps even father to son, because of course it couldn’t be the same individual.

Clearly, they hadn’t gotten the regeneration memo.

The thing that didn’t ever seem to change was the TARDIS. There was a collection of images of the Doctor’s ship as well. People pointed to the image of the box in stained-glass cathedral windows, ancient Roman frescoes, cave paintings, medieval tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, Egyptian hieroglyphs, paintings in the Louvre. It appeared over and over and over again. 

Opinions about the Doctor, Coulson saw, seemed to vary wildly. Some hailed him as a hero and a champion. 

_Some linguists have even speculated that the word itself—Doctor—the title that we use to describe an individual dedicated to healing, to knowledge, to the welfare of humanity, comes directly from this mysterious figure. Whomever, whatever he may be, he has proven himself, time and again, to be a guardian of mankind._

Other opinions were less glowing, pointing to all the accounts of the Doctor’s alleged presence on the scenes of some of the world’s worst disasters, from the destruction of Pompeii to the sinking of the Titanic.

_We can only speculate, of course, as to why the Doctor so often appears at times of strife, destruction, and tragedy, but the correlation cannot be denied. Is he a savior as so many claim, there to try to mitigate the disaster? Is he a herald of doom? Does the storm simply follow him, with innocents being caught in its path? Does he wantonly cause the destruction? Some have gone so far as to claim that the Doctor is Death itself._

_That is why we tell you this: If you have encountered the Doctor, if he has crossed your path, God help you._

Jesus, Coulson thought. What have we gotten ourselves mixed up in?

As much as Coulson hated to admit it, he could sort of understand where the Academy had been coming from. His instincts told him that the Doctor was not a bad guy in the simplest sense of the term. But if even a third of what Coulson had read about him was true, it was no wonder there were people out there scared enough to want him dead. And this was just an account from one planet. Coulson tried to imagine it on a galactic scale, or a universal one.

He had seen kill orders built off far less.

Well, like it or not, they were a part of it now. River was tied to the Doctor and the Doctor was clearly curious about her. There wasn’t a doubt in Coulson’s mind that the Time Lord would be back. River was also SHIELD, one of their own. No matter how things shook out between River and Clint, she wouldn’t be dealing with the Doctor alone.

Coulson kept reading and bookmarking sites until the lunch crowd started to get heavy. Then he packed up and walked home, hoping that there hadn’t been any bloodshed while he was gone.

*****

Clint rolled his head against the back of the armchair when he heard the key in the lock. It was just Coulson, of course. He could tell by the steps in the entry way. A moment later, Coulson appeared in the doorway of the dark living room. Clint had killed the lights and pulled all of the curtains an hour ago, hoping he and River could get a little rest. It had worked for River; she was curled up on the sofa, sound asleep. Clint had pulled the armchair up as close to the sofa as he could and settled down, but as tired as he was, he was still a little too keyed up to sleep.

At the sight of Coulson he quietly got up. He walked by his friend, silently jerking his head to indicate he should follow, and the two men retreated to the kitchen.

“You two are welcome to the guest room, you know,” Coulson said. 

“We’re good,” Clint replied.

“Are you?” 

Clint smiled slightly. “We’ll get there,” he said. He tiredly scrubbed one hand through his hair. “Don’t ever fucking do anything like that again, Phil. No more digging around behind our backs.”

In all honesty, he was kind of angered out at the moment, but Clint didn’t want to let the matter of Melody Pond’s dossiers slide.

“I didn’t want to say anything until I had some idea what I was looking at,” Coulson said. When Clint just raised an eyebrow, Coulson held up his hands. “No more personal secret research projects on teammates. Got it.”

“Thanks.” Clint rubbed at his eyes. “Sorry for running you out of here earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it. This has all been a lot to take in.” Coulson glanced back toward the dark living room where River was sleeping. “Do you know what the weirdest part about all of this is?”

Clint followed his gaze. “The fact that she makes so much more sense now?” 

“Exactly.”

River had _never_ added up. Not from day one. Her past history, what she had divulged of it, had never made much sense. She’d always come across as too old for her years, even for someone who they’d assumed had just had a short and rough childhood. Her skills had been too good, too well-practiced, and some of them, like her internal GPS, were, when you got right down to it, humanly impossible. 

And then there were the little things. River had always seemed very well educated for someone who had supposedly left school at thirteen, Clint had thought. Well, of course, she was a freaking _Oxford_ graduate. When she was distracted in the mess hall, she had a habit of carefully measuring out her food. Now he knew that she had grown up when rationing was just a fact of life. She knew ballroom dance, but Clint had seen her have to psych herself up a little to dance in a club. 

Then there was Chicago, the Christmas before last. The mission had been a waste of time, but it had paid off in other ways. He and River had finally cashed in several months worth of unacknowledged sexual tension, barely leaving her bed once they’d sent in their report. Clint certainly hadn’t been complaining at the time, but she’d known a trick or two that had taken him a little by surprise.

The fact that River was some kind of alien hybrid who was three times older than she looked was massively improbable and hard to process, but at the same time it made a lot of the pieces fall into place.

“Hell,” Clint said to Coulson with a half-laugh, “she thinks you have good taste in music. That alone should have been a giant red flag.”

Coulson rolled his eyes. “Very funny.”

“I thought so.” Clint took a seat in one of the kitchen chairs. “You’re going to want to report all of this to Fury, aren’t you?”

It had been their last topic of conversation before River had drifted off.

“I think we have to,” Coulson said. “For her own protection if nothing else. The Doctor knows that something is up with her and I’m willing to bet that means we’ll see him again. And we have no real idea what the status of the Academy is, or if there’s anyone else out there who might be looking for her. Telling Fury will add a safety net.”

“Yeah and what if Fury decides she’s of more use as a lab specimen?” Clint asked. Coulson frowned at him. “Come on, Phil. Her genetics have keys to completely changing a person’s appearance, to fucking _survive death_. Are you telling me that Fury wouldn’t be interested in that? What about the Council, if they ever got wind of it?”

It wasn’t that far-fetched of a worry.

“You might have a point on the Council, but there’s nothing that says they ever have to be informed,” Coulson said. “I trust Fury. Downing, too, for that matter.”

“I’d like to trust them, too,” River said.

Clint and Coulson turned to where River had appeared at the doorway of the kitchen. She was rumpled, but looked calmer than she had since they’d arrived yesterday. 

“But Fury and Downing serve the greater good,” she continued. “Sort of like the Academy. And I’ve already told you how that turned out.”

Coulson sighed. “Can we at least discuss it?” he asked.

River considered for a moment, caught Clint’s eye, and nodded.

“We can discuss it.”

*****

It was fifteen hours until the debriefing and exhaustion was officially starting to set in. They’d need to get some real sleep before then, but none of them were very motivated to move at the moment.

River was tucked comfortably into a corner of the sofa. Clint was sprawled across the rest of it, his head in her lap, eyes half-closed as she carded her fingers through his hair. Coulson was slumped down in his armchair, feet up on the coffee table. 

They were all, in a word, _spent_. It had been a hell of a couple of days.

“We should all go to bed,” Coulson said, making no attempt whatsoever to move.

“I’m good,” Clint mumbled, half-asleep. River smiled fondly down at him.

“A real bed would probably be better,” River said. “Rest up before facing the music.”

It had taken a lot of debate, but River had decided to go along with Coulson and bring Fury and Downing in. She still wasn’t one-hundred percent sold on it. Coulson was right, though, when he’d pointed out that the Doctor was sure to come around again, and there could be unknown parties out there with intel on her. River had agreed to bringing Fury up to speed not so much for her own protection, but for the protection of her SHIELD colleagues who could potentially wind up in the crossfire.

“It’s for the best, kid,” Coulson said. He made a face. “I’m really going to have to get out of the habit of calling you _kid_ ,” he added.

“Actually, I kind of like it that you call me that.”

She appreciated it for the gesture of affection she knew it was. Besides, seventy-six years old or not, she was apparently still capable of being very foolish about some things, like underestimating the loyalty of her friends.

Coulson looked at her and smiled a little, shaking his head.

“What?” River asked.

“I was just thinking, you were a kid in the 1940s. . .” Coulson actually looked a little embarrassed. “Nothing.”

“You were wondering if I was a Captain America fan?”

“He did have a fan base in Britain. I’ve read about it. And you clearly know about him.”

It was true. A couple of years ago, in a safe house in Rome, she’d hijacked his lecture on the subject.

“Well, he certainly never toured in Oban,” River said, “but it so happens that a couple of the movies did make it up our way. All of the kids went to see them.”

“Yeah?” Coulson said. His raised eyebrow clearly added, And?

River’s smile morphed into a full-fledged, if somewhat apologetic, grin.

“Honestly, we all kind of thought he was a Yankee ponce.”

Clint choked once before succumbing to a fit of helpless laughter. Coulson just looked appalled.

“Oh, come on,” River said. “The man was running around fighting Nazis while wearing tights and a helmet with wings. Only an American comes up with something like that.”

By the time Clint had laughed himself out, wheezing and clutching his ribs, Coulson just looked disgusted with the both of them.

“That’s it. I’m going to bed,” he said.

“Sleep tight, Phil.”

*****

_Saturday, April 11, 2009_

Coulson’s trust in Fury and Downing, as it turned out, was not misplaced.

The debriefing took place behind the secured door of the Director’s office. Fury had ceded his desk to Downing, standing behind the former Director while River told her story from beginning to end. After two long hours, when she was finally finished, Fury and Downing just exchanged a look. Downing nodded.

“Director Downing and I reviewed the footage of the Doctor’s interrogation,” Fury said. Which meant that they must have had some inkling of what they were going to hear from River today. “It’s already been wiped from the record.”

River couldn’t quite keep the look of surprise off of her face. Fury actually smiled a little.

“Agent Song, what you’ve reported to us today, as far as Director Downing and I are concerned, doesn’t need to go any further than the five of us in this room. Your origins, as unconventional as they may be, do not conflict with your ability to do your job for SHIELD. You will remain in your position as a field agent, same clearance level. And I see no reason for the Council to be informed of your special circumstances. I take it this is acceptable to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I think we’re good here. So you can stop glaring at me now, Barton,” Fury added.

River glanced aside in time to see Clint paste an innocent look on his face.

Fury had only one caveat. River was to pick one of the doctors from Medical, someone that she trusted, to be brought in on the secret. Her scrambled genetics had never exacerbated any medical problems before, but given how often agents wound up in the infirmary, Fury didn’t want to risk it.

River hoped Judith Levine wouldn’t mind being put in the hot seat.

When Clint, Coulson, and River had been dismissed, they made it as far as the lobby of the Administration Center before, as one, they stopped and just looked at each other.

“That really just happened, didn’t it?” Clint said.

“I’m fairly certain,” River replied. She was still a bit stunned herself. Never in a million years had she expected it to be that easy.

“I told you,” Coulson said. “You’re SHIELD. We take care of our own, remember?”

He had told her that back in the beginning, back when he’d sat down across from the Reaper and offered her a place with SHIELD. River hadn’t believed him, then. And while she’d come to feel like she had a place with Clint and Coulson as part of their team, River realized that she’d always felt a bit removed from SHIELD as a whole.

That feeling was gone now. Maybe whoever had said _the truth will set you free_ had been on to something after all.

“So. What do we do now?” she asked.

“The same thing we always do: prep for the next mission,” Coulson said practically. “God knows we’ll probably have one sooner rather than later.”

The world had been upended and it would never look quite the same for any of them ever again. But they were SHIELD. No matter how weird the world got, it was their job to protect it.


	3. After The Credits

Downing was still sitting in Fury’s chair, resting against the back, her eyes closed. But Fury knew better than to think she had nodded off.

“I have to admit,” Fury said, taking the chair that Coulson had vacated, “I didn’t think it would play out quite like that.”

Downing opened her eyes and smiled at him wryly.

“I believe that’s par for the course where the Doctor is concerned,” she said. “We always knew that he’d turn up eventually. From the day we brought River Song in, it was just a matter of time.” 

Downing sat up straighter. 

“And now it’s happened,” she added. She sounded almost like she was talking to herself. “All of the pieces are finally on the board.”

Fury nodded. “So. What do we do now?”

“We do what we’ve always done.” Downing reached into an inner pocket of her suit jacket and pulled out an envelope. It looked old, the paper worn, the writing on the front a bit faded. The seal was freshly broken. Downing smoothed her hand over it carefully.

“We do as we’re told.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes _Phase 1_ of the _Marvelous Tale_ ‘Verse. 
> 
> _Phase 2_ is currently being plotted and written, but with the holidays coming up fast, there will probably be a bit of a hiatus before the next installments start going up. Never fear—they will get written and posted! Clint, Coulson, and River own my brain and show no signs of moving out. (Really, they are incredibly bossy.) I’ll post progress reports on the main page for the series.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
